Time to embrace the change
Sandeep Chauhan, managing director of Definition Health, hopes the challenges in scaling approved digital health solutions across the NHS can tackle the age-old barriers to change.
As I write this article, the glow of being selected to be one of the 12 innovators to join the NHS Innovation Accelerator (NHS NIA) has started to fade. In its place is the realisation that, despite this accolade vindicating our hard work over the past three years to improve patient outcomes using digital technology, we may still face the same challenges we have always done when it comes to implementing solutions into hospitals.
They are, providers believe they can build their own solutions; a lack of awareness of what already exits; slower decision-making processes; and hospital finance departments working in silos so all they see is the cost of a solution which may not have been budgeted for, and not the efficiencies that are likely to come.
Sometimes, the barrier can also be the desire to be first. We hear a lot in the NHS about ‘first movers/early adopters’ yet rarely ‘second movers’. The advantages of being a second mover is you can adopt and adapt a tried and tested solution which means implementation is quicker and patients, staff and the hospital bank balance will show positive outcomes sooner.
But thank goodness for those brave first movers who believed in our digital health solutions. I salute the team at The Montefiore Hospital in Hove, which was the first private hospital to adopt our LifeBox digital patient preassessment app. By the time, COVID-19 struck last year, it had already digitised its entire patient pre-operative assessment service. Being an early adopter had unforeseen benefits in the face of a pandemic - while it became an NHS hub for clinically urgent surgery, The Montefiore was able to use the app to assess the requirements of its own cancer patients coming to its oncology unit, alleviating the need for 70% of hospital visits during the early stages of lockdown.
South West London Elective Orthopaedic Centre (SWLEOC) was the first NHS hospital to start using LifeBox. During the lockdown phases, it used the digital app to pre-assess patients from their homes, ensuring they were ready for theatre when surgery could recommence. SWLEOC is now gradually rolling out this product to all four trusts within its partnership which, I am sure, will be grateful to be `second movers’.
Digital transformation in healthcare only works when teams collaborate. With all our hospital partners, we become one team, working together to adapt the digital solution to the hospital’s individual needs, with a commitment from both sides to drive a better patient experience and improve safety.
This past year, the NHS has shown a huge ability to adapt quickly, especially making real strides in embedding digital approaches to patient care. We saw the adoption of our digital health solutions move forward by two years within weeks when the pandemic struck.
It is a tragic irony that it needed a pandemic to push the NHS out of its comfort zone when it comes to embracing digital technology. But now that it has, we can’t go back to business as usual of lengthy face-to-face appointments and bringing patients into hospitals to fill in forms. The NHS Innovation Accelerator recognised this fact when it chose us to be one of the 12 innovators to address the key NHS challenges of restoring services, meeting new care demands and reducing the backlogs caused by the pandemic. From remote patient monitoring and diagnostics to virtual clinical training for staff, innovation will be critical in caring for NHS patients and staff effectively and efficiently in this `new normal’.
While the NIA recognition is fantastic for Definition Health, we still need to see more NHS hospitals adopt digital solutions to meet the pent-up demand in the system and to see more rapid decision-making. In our experience, it can often take six to 12 months from the point of first engagement to contract signature. That’s a considerable period of time for savings not to be realised and, importantly, for patient outcomes to be compromised.
However, I take great hope in the wording within the NHS 2021/2022 Priorities and Operational Planning Guidance. In this document, it emphasises the need to `accelerate progress on digitally-enabled care’. As we start to restore services, the push to embrace digital health transformation may no longer just come from innovators like us alone, but hopefully from within the NHS itself.